To create a candidate pool:
- Build good relationships with placement agencies and firms.
- Create awareness about your organization by advertising your strengths in industry magazines.
- Regularly visit the online job portals to find out about candidates who match your requirements.
- Add to your bank of potential candidates after coming back from industry conferences and recruiting events.
- The best way to make your ideal candidates know you are hiring is to find out what they read, the websites they visit, the conferences or tradeshows they would be interested in, the discussion groups and forums they frequent, and the social networking sites they are a part of. All this information will help you to place your recruiting advertisements in the right places. You will increase your chances of talking to your ideal candidates directly and also spend your money effectively.
- Look inside before looking out. One of the most effective retention strategies in organizations involves filling any vacancies internally. Giving lateral or bigger opportunities to existing staff not only boosts their morale but also helps your employees expose their hidden strengths and talents. Learning new skills on the job certainly encourages them. Moreover, you can save significantly on your recruiting costs by finding the right talent in-house.
- Your existing employees are your best PR guys. If your organization has good HR practices including retention, rewards, recognition, work-life balance, and the like, your employees will be talking about these good things to the outside world, making your job much easier. For outside candidates, it is easier to believe current employees than your company website or literature.
- The Internet is the least expensive and yet most effective tool for your recruiting needs. Your website is the best place to start. Make sure that you talk about your values, mission, vision, HR policies, and employee training and development on the site. Create a separate section that lists available positions in your organization along with brief job descriptions, and invite interested candidates to submit resumes there. Another way to recruit through the Internet is to post your positions on the websites of industry bodies, professional associations, online job portals, online versions of newspapers that carry classified job information, and more.
- Involve your employees in the hiring process through referral programs or by seeking their help in judging the necessary skills for a given position as you interview new candidates. Referral programs have been a success in most instances, especially because they carry monetary incentives for successful recruitment.
- Seek the help of professional recruitment agencies. Their experience and reach in the market can get you good candidates in far less time.
Recruiting a new candidate can prove expensive and time-consuming for organizations. It is the responsibility of the HR professional to scrutinize, interview, and select the ideal candidate for the job. There are no second chances, and so it is important for the HR professional to get it right the first time.
